Airfix R.E. 8, 1/72, With Some Corrections....

[Old Man]

I am building this for a vintage kit group build at WWI aircraft models, but thought I would put it up here as well.

This is one of the very oldest Great War kits in 1/72, dating to 1958, and concealed within it seems to be a decent model of an R.E. 8....

[Old Man]

First order of business has been rectifying the fuselage.

It is too long and does not bend enough. The over-length is concentrated between the cockpits; the opening of the pilot's cockpit is much too long, and the opening of the observer's set too far back. To work more easily, I filled in the cockpit openings, and the 'notch' in the fuselage bottom, with plastic sheet as thick as the kit pieces.

I cut the fuselage pieces in half, using a photo-etch saw blade, with the cut made at the point where the pilot's cockpit opening should have ended (just aft of where the kit has a locator hole for the rear cabane strut). Four millimeters was then cut of the front of the rear portions, and the mating surfaces of the rear portions were then sanded to a slant that removed about a millimeter from the top of the pieces. The halves of each fuselage piece were then re-joined with CA gel.

These pictures show the altered pieces in comparison with pieces from another Airfix R.E. 8 kit, to highlight the differences.

In sanding this new seam down, a good deal of surface detail had to go, but there is more sanding required, as more subtle corrections are made. The kit gives a sort of 'tear-drop' shape to the fuselage in plan view: the very front (just before the 'pinch' to the engine) is a little bulbous, and the taper towards the tail begins in front of the observer's cockpit. This is incorrect; things should go back straight to about the middle of the observer's gun ring. I sanded down the sides till this was in order. The kit plastic is thick enough to take this, and the kit would build a bit wide here, it seems, too; I was ready to add shims at the mating surfaces of the fuselage halves if it became necessary, but it has not. It was necessary, though, to put the 'pinch' back in. All surface detail is gone, and will have to be restored as the build progresses (a shame, because some of, if a bit heavy, was not at all bad).

Next was some advance work on the rear top of the fuselage. Kicking the 'bend' up a bit gives the wrong slant to the top of the turtledeck, and in any case the kit turtledeck is too high, starts too low, and goes back too far. The gun ring also stands too high above the turtledeck. I sanded away the kit turtledeck, raised the sides with 1mm square rod (sanded down to the proper taper so it went straight back and met the rise of the rear fuselage). I put quarter millimeter sheet atop this on either piece. I have shaped a turtledeck piece from two millimeter sheet. It will be added once the fuselage is closed, but has been fitted pretty well already. The tail skid and lower fin have been removed, and a bit of reconstruction (with 1mm square rod) done at the stern-post. A bit of sanding at the top and bottom has been done, to bring the fuselage height in line with the drawings, and smooth out the contours.

The last of the basic fuselage preparation is sanding out the interior walls. This pretty much has to be done, as the rear cabane strut emerges from the pilot's cockpit, its attachment to the upper longeron plainly visible, and so some structural detail simply must be added to the cockpit walls. Sanding continued until the sides of the fuselage are somewhat flexible; I would guess they are a bit under a half millimeter wide at the thickest now, but in any case, it would no longer be safe to thin them further. In the photograph below, the measure of the thinning is the space of grey outside the white plugging the gun ring; this was flush with the side when the thinning started....

[Old Man]

Next order of business was dealing with the wings. These are too long, much too thick, a bit too wide, and have the wrong rake to their tips. Surface detail and locator holes are incorrectly placed, but will not survive fixing the rest, and so this is of little importance. The lower wing root has no cut-out.

On the upper wing, some of the excess span is in the center section, which is about two and a half millimeters too wide. Because of the extreme dihedral, to fix this requires cutting the upper wing into three pieces. This was done after a preliminary sanding to remove the ribs and injector marks.

The wing pieces were then seriously sanded, both upper and under surfaces. The picture shows in-board ends of the upper wing panels, thinning complete on one, not begun on the other. In the process of sanding, occasional swipes at the leading and trailing edges brought the chord down right enough.

Once the pieces were thinned, the rake was corrected at the tips. This takes care of most of the remaining excess span; once the rake was right, about a millimeter and a half still needed removing from each panel. The edges of the cut-out in the center-section were re-done using billets of 2mm sheet. I removed a little too much from the ends of the center section, and replaced this with caps of 30 thousandths sheet. Then the upper wing was re-assembled using CA gel.

The lower wing panels were cut off their roots and bearer, and treated as were the upper wings. The lower wings are not quite so thick as the upper wing was, and so this went a bit quicker. Correcting the rake of the tips again took off most of the excess span. The slant from the join to the root had to be sanded a bit wider.

Here are the undersides of both upper and lower wing pieces.

Next order of business will be interior work in the cockpits....

[Martian]

Fascinating stuff! I'm hooked on this build already it also puts my whinging about the Hippo Gotha into perspective!

Martin

[AndyC]

That's very impressive work there! Will watch the rest with interest!

[warhawk]

Very interesting subject, and good to see some justice done to it

[Old Man]

Thank you, Gentlemen. I have made some progress on the interior, and should have pictures of it soon.

[CarLos]

You inspired me to start an old Airfix too!

[Old Man]

You inspired me to start an old Airfix too!

And you seem to be making a fine job of it, too, Sir! Very nice start on the Hannoveranner. There are good models in these kits....

[GrzeM]

You both guys are kings!!!

[Devilfish]

Amazing work on a very old and awful kit. I did one once and I hated it!

[Quentin]

Blimey, that's going to look brilliant. I always had half an idea of bringing the Airfix RE8 up to scratch, not realising quite how much work would be involved.

Looking forward to the next post.

[airhead]

I'm going to follow this one.

And the one by Carlos.

I already got Quentin's build stickied....

Man,.. I'm not getting any modelling done myself

But I love it!

[Old Man]

Thank you, Gentlemen.

Interior work has been mostly done, and the fuselage closed....

The interior rigging is tempered brass wire .004" diameter, blackened with Blacken-It solution. The seat is from a Tom's Modelworks etch set, as are the instrument bezels (the instruments are decals from the spares folder). The interior pieces are (left to right) instrument panel, observer's map-board, pilot's floor et al, observer's floor.

The pilot's cockpit opening was cut out before interior work was done (as it interacts with the upper longeron. This photograph shows what is left of the plug after the new opening was cut out.

Once the interior bits were fastened in and the fuselage closed, I cut out the observer's cockpit opening. This was done by gluing down a disk of .015" sheet, then cutting out everything inside it, leaving only a very thin rim to represent the race of the gun ring.

The observer's seat, and perhaps one or two other bits, will be added through the cockpit opening.

The next step will be to put in the turtle-back....

[Quentin]

Looks great so far. I always do the interior rigging as a separate item, as you have done here. It looks better than dry-brushing. And the large cockpit opening in the RE8 makes all that interior work worthwhile. Keep up the good work.

[bigbadbadge]

Wow amazing work and very interesting thread.

Thanks for sharing

All the best

Chris

[Sea Vixen]

Stunning work so far!

[Old Man]

Thank you very much, Gentlemen.

I have made some more progress on this.

First, work was continued on the fuselage.

On examination, some alteration was necessary at the rear of the observer's cockpit and the mating of the fuselage with the turtle-back. I trimmed the area behind the gun ring and added a piece to represent the bearer for the turtle-back stringers (and block much of the view down the rear fuselage). It was necessary to replace the cross-piece here. I sanded away most of the flat pieces at the top of the fuselage in the rear, and replaced these with a fresh sheet of .25mm sheet. I put the turtle-back piece onto this, gave it its final shape, and then put another piece of .25mm sheet on the very rear, to blend in with the rear of the turtle-back.

At this point I discovered I was out of CA gel (the tube I thought I had had in reserve turned out to be the thin liquid type). I am waiting on resupply before fixing the cross-piece behind the pilot's seat, which has got knocked a bit awry. At any rate, without the right glue, I turned to something that needed none, and would bring a bit of color into the Build, and did the upper wing. Wife had a major project and so I was unable to get in progress pictures of this, but ought to be able to when doing the same process on the lower wings. On the upper surface the ribs and 'rib-lets' are marked, the area between are scraped down a bit with the edge of a #10 blade and sand-paper on a dowel. The ribs are covered with 1/64" striping tape. The wing is heavily sprayed with primer (Tamiya White), and then sanded over the ribs with a fine sanding stick till the tapes show through dark. This is repeated a couple of times. Very little will be left of the tape, and ends will come up occasionally and need to be glued back down. When I dared not sand anymore, I gave it a final spray of white primer. On the under-surface, after the white spray, all that is necessary is to mark the rib positions in with a regular pencil. Painting is then done, using PollyScale acrylics heavily cut with Future, with 'Old Concrete' for the undersurface (two coats only necessary), and an RLM 'violet-brown', dosed with red (to represent P.C. 12, which expect was used on this particular aeroplane, as it served out its career in Egypt). On the upper-surface, I painted black and the straight color between the ribs first, then painted over the whole thing with a couple more coats.

[Old Man]

I have gotten some more done on this, between bouts of flu and housework and other projects.

First, the lower wings are well under way:

This is what the 'tape' method for rib-tapes looks like before it is sprayed with primer and sanded a couple of times. The spar fairings at the wing root at measured as precisely as I can manage, with reference to the upper wing and the fuselage.

The last major surgery on the fuselage is complete. the nose needs to be cut off, and the resultant mating surface sanded to a bit of slant, so that the nose will tip up a bit from its original posture in the kit pieces:

A good deal of sculpting work is done on the nose piece, to alter the cant of the surface the cylinders are attached to, and to indicate the presence of engine bearers. The kit air-scoop must be removed, and a new one constructed. A full sump cowling was put on, as the example I intend this to be a model of had this style of cowling.

The cylinder banks have to go closer together, and set closer to vertical, than the kit provides, as the air-scoop must be very close to the tops of the cylinders. The front of the scoop must be open, and has some internal vane-work.

I have begun putting in surface detail, panels lines at the nose, and fabric seams (the latter will get a raised treatment as well).

You may note the white plastic in front of the cockpit: it tells a tale of disaster. In working the nose, a drop or two managed to jar loose the instrument panel and the pilot's cockpit floor assembly. To get these things re-attached properly, it was necessary to remove the forward decking, and replace it once the cockpit was repaired. The salvage proceeded well enough, I think....

[Miggers]

This is fantastic stuff.

A kit I'd never thought of re-working at all(I'm a Spit/Sea fan).

Duly "followed".

Edited October 21, 2012 by Miggers

[Arpie]

Stunning work on the interior, and a fantastic step by step on how to corrct the shape issues.

[Old Man]

This is fantastic stuff.

A kit I'd never thought of re-working at all(I'm a Spit/Sea fan).

Duly "followed".

This is fantastic stuff.

A kit I'd never thought of re-working at all(I'm a Spit/Sea fan).

Duly "followed".

Thank you, Sir.

In the endless debate between ''no-way-this-accurately-represents-a-whatchamacallit v. looks-like-a-whatchamacallit-to-me", it is often overlooked that one modeler can be on both sides of the thing, just in different periods or projects. I like the Spitfire, and expect I will do one eventually (in a night/white underside pre-war scheme, probably), but I doubt I would do too much to correct a kit that 'looked like a Spitfire' to me, since the subject and period are not my chief interest. My chief focus is on earlier topics and times, and so with a subject like the R.E. 8, I will go all out to get it as right as I can. But a modeler who just wanted an R.E. 8 could in fact build this kit with very little if any alteration and get a result that 'looked like an R.E. 8' to just about anybody. If, for instance, someone just cut out a bit from the wing-roots of the lower wing, and made sure the rear cabane strut came out of the pilot's cockpit, and not the side of the fuselage, the thing would pass casual inspection even from people who know a bit about the period and type.

Edited October 22, 2012 by Old Man

[Old Man]

Stunning work on the interior, and a fantastic step by step on how to corrct the shape issues.

Stunning work on the interior, and a fantastic step by step on how to corrct the shape issues.

Thank you, Sir.

If one likes working two-seaters from the Great War, and builds in 1/72, this is about the only mainstream kit available....

[alex]

nice work so far, congratulations! What scares me the most on the "old" kits are the struts and rigging. I did some biplanes before, but I never feel confortable doing them.

Alex

[Old Man]

Got a fair amount of work in on this one over the holidays. It is beginning to look like an aeroplane....

The first pictures show the thing before the final primer coat, with wings, scratch-built tail surfaces, and surface detail on the fuselage. The vertical fin is non-standard, but accurate for the subject of the model --- an R.E. 8 at a training establishment in Egypt. Though not pictured, the rudder has been made.

At this point I discovered I had mis-measured, and attached the wings two millimeters too far aft. So I took them off and re-attached them; the next pictures show the thing with the wings in proper position, and under the final coat of Tamiya Fine White primer.

Once in this state I proceeded to basic painting, after a bit of further detailing. The fasteners indication I had put in with a needle point did not come up well, and so I went ahead and added them 'armor style' with bits of .25mm rod.

The vertical fin has been left unpainted as yet, because there may be a tricky bit of marking needing to be put in, and while I have not decided for sure how I would handle it, I expect a blank white surface will be of help.

Next steps will be to complete interior and exterior fuselage detailing, and decaling.